A large body of literature examines the reasons that incumbents are unlikely to lose their seats. So most legislators who sit during a lame duck session will have just passed an electoral test. Just 3 percent of representatives and 6 percent of senators who sought reelection lost their bids, while 6 percent of representatives and 5 percent of senators retired. In the 2016 election, the departing member rate was especially low. The force of this critique is blunted by the fact that the vast majority of members win their reelections: Since 1962, just 6 percent of representatives and 13 percent of senators have lost reelection. And in the average session, only about 5 percent of members retire. As Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman says, “It is utterly undemocratic for repudiated representatives to legislate in the name of the American people.” Indeed, John Nagle of Notre Dame has demonstrated that these sorts of concerns animated the push for the 20th Amendment, which, after 1933, eliminated the long and mandatory lame duck session that had followed each election since the founding of the Republic. Lame duck sessions differ from regular legislative sessions in that some members will have lost their reelection bids and others will be on the brink of voluntary retirement.įor many, the mere presence of members who will not be returning is prima facie evidence that lame duck sessions are undesirable. In this paper, we explain how incentives change for lame duck legislators, briefly review past research on lame ducks, and present our statistical findings that support and add to the existing literature.

Past studies have found lame duck legislators to be less likely to indulge most special interests, but others suggest some legislators may be more likely to indulge one particular special interest: their next employers. Our analysis supports the primary findings of the existing literature on lame ducks. Beyond these voting patterns, it is difficult to say whether members vote more or less “responsibly” during lame duck sessions of Congress. In these sessions, however, a new pattern emerges: Senators become less likely to cast bipartisan votes. These patterns persist in very lame duck sessions-those that take place following the loss of majority status within a single house. There are subtle but statistically significant differences between voting patterns in regular and lame duck sessions, as revealed by analysis of more than 52,000 House and Senate roll call votes.ĭuring a lame duck session, members are slightly less likely to side with their own parties and less likely to vote at all. Lame duck sessions are often criticized by the victorious party in the election, and a common critique is that the lame duck members-undisciplined by electoral constraints-vote irresponsibly. A lame duck session of Congress occurs when legislators meet after an election has been held but before the next Congress has taken office.

Lame duck meaning